The Man Who Saw Everything

by Deborah Levy

I began to speak. I heard myself say things I did not know I thought.

When we pulled apart he said in German, ‘This one is such a beauty,’ but I didn’t know if he was referring to the mushroom or myself.

I had never given much thought to a pearl belonging to a gender.

Her waist was tiny but her voice was huge.

When we were alone in the dacha he spoke freely with his body. And that is something I have never done. I have never had a free conversation with my body. I have silenced my lovers with my body and controlled the kind of conversation they wished to have with their own body. I have never been free.

It was true that I had no idea how to endure being alive and everything that comes with it. Responsibility. Love. Death. Sex. Loneliness. History.

‘I am scared of everything’ – she pointed to the clock ticking on the dacha wall – ‘I can’t see an end to it. I am frightened all the time. Morning to night and then it’s morning again.

I didn’t know where all the tears were coming from. Life is shocking.

My father lowered his voice. ‘Son, you mentioned you buried me in a matchbox.’ I nodded. ‘I think you were remembering a very small coffin.’ His old hand reached for my hand and he squeezed it. We had finally arrived in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. After a while my brother led my father away.

the Emotions.

‘No,’ older Jennifer said, sitting by my side, ‘no, she was not the python, don’t make her the thing that you were. You were the snake in the reeds. You walked away when I most needed you.’

I wanted to die of shame but everyone insisted on keeping me alive. I had to live. I had to live this moment now with Wolfgang. I don’t think I’d had a normal life since Isaac’s death, or since my meeting with Walter Müller and his family. When I crossed the road that day, I was a man in pieces. I must have said this out loud. ‘I was a man in pieces.’

I was all over the walls but my name was not on the guest list.

What was the point in giving him stained, old memories? Would they be a gift or a torment?

‘Everyone is replaceable,’ I said, ‘but your love is not the love I want.’

I was frightened of everything in the past and whatever was going to happen next.